Pretty Good

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's the story which makes this a little gem of a film. Three college students are on their way to a concert when they take a wrong turn and crash the car due to bad weather. Luckily for them, a handyman finds them and takes them to a nearby house where he does odd jobs. The doctor authorises them to stay in the house for a few days to rest, especially since one of them has a suspected concussion. However, things are not so black and white in the house. The relationship between Mother and Daughter is strained, due to the Mother's opinion on men. Is there someone else in the house? Are they watching the girls?The writers Reagan Ramsey and Don Gronquist (who also directed) do a great job in building the story slowly creating an uneasiness and unsureness about the house and its occupants. You're never quite sure what is really going on or who is behind it. Gronquist does an okay job when he dons his directorial hat, though the pace is a little slow, even in exciting moments, and there are times when more action or drama is required so as not to bore the viewers. It would have been a little better if Gronquist could have injected a bit more tension and eeriness into the film and the surroundings.The lead role, Terry Morgan (played by Laural Munson), is a little wooden and sometimes the pauses in her conversations is a little too long so that you think she could be reading off of cards. The best actress by far is Virginia Settle who portrays the bitter and twisted matriarch, Mrs Penrose; she gives a strong and believable depiction and helps to make this film better.The other thing which makes this movie one to watch is the twist at the climax, you know roughly what's coming though Ramsey and Gronquist add an extra twist to throw the viewer slightly off the mark. This is a film worth watching at least once, especially if you like mysteries and thrillers as this ticks the boxes, though you will need to like the slow and less action-packed style.

In "Unhinged", three college friends named Terry, Nancy and Gloria go to a music festival in Pinewood, but during a dreadful storm, their car falls into a steep ravine and the girls are rescued by a man named Norman, who takes them to a nearby mansion. The owner of the place is a woman named Marion Penrose, who lives with her crippled mother. Marion advices the girls not to go out again during the storm, and offers them to stay for as long as they need.For dinner, Marion introduces the girls to her mother, Mrs. Edith Penrose, who turns out to be a delusional, uptight harpy. Mrs. Penrose ruins dinner for everyone by making awkward comments, accusing Marion of being a tramp and going off on a rant on how awful men are, especially her ex-husband, who cheated on her. Later that night, Terry and Nancy talk about what a horrible time they're having and both agree that they want to leave as soon as possible. Also, Terry tells Nancy that she thinks there's someone lurking outside the house, watching them, but her friend doesn't believe her. Things keep getting more and more tense between Marion and her mother and Terri can't wait to get the hell out of there, not only because she knows that there is someone watching her, but also because she can't tolerate the weird mother-daughter relationship. For some reason, "Unhinged" was banned in the UK, which is something that is proudly mentioned on the DVD cover. Honestly, I don't get it; the film isn't that violent. We see a few murders on screen and they are gory too, but it's nothing so vile that we need to look away from the screen. I am a horror fan, but I dislike extreme gore and I can honestly say that I wasn't freaked out by this at all. It is perfectly endurable and I can't understand why this film was banned at all. It can't be the nudity either, since it is something very innocent (we only see the girls showering). Could it be that the movie was banned due to the offensively bad acting instead? That I can believe!"Unhinged" was filmed in Portland, Oregon and director Don Gronquist decided to cast Portland locals with little or no acting experience… and it becomes evident as we see the film. To my surprise, Virginia Settle, who plays Mrs. Edith Penrose, was actually a stage actress. Mrs. Settle is probably one of the highest points of this film due to her over-the-top acting that gives this film an undeniable campy nature. The way she yells and gesticulates, while she's accusing her daughter of being a whore is simply hilarious. The high-pitched voice, the eyes wide open and the whole refined and snobbish aristocrat stereotype makes Mrs. Penrose a very memorable character, but I would have never guessed that she was actually a trained actress. Perhaps the declamatory acting is part of her theatrical training. Janet Penner, who plays Marion Penrose was probably the more decent actress on this film and thank god for that, because even though Terry is the main character, she is pretty forgettable as a lead and the actress, Laurel Munson is very unskilled. Marion is a more interesting character; Penner gives a solid performance throughout the entire film and during the last minutes, she displays a lot more strength and histrionics, while managing to stay serious and avoiding the campiness. The ending is campy by itself, but Penner doesn't make it more bizarre. The two other girls were awful; Sara Ansley, who portrayed Nancy, was a model whom Gronquist had found through a talent agency and maybe she was an excellent model, but as an actress, she was terrible. The filming locations are probably one of the best things about "Unhinged", since most of the action takes place at the Pittock Mansion, which is the perfect scenario for a horror film. The place is beautiful for sure, but it's also eerie and it gives a feeling of uneasiness, since the girls seem to be lost and trapped in that isolated location.Throughout the entire film, we hear a weird synthesizer music that doesn't really fit for a horror movie that is supposed to be serious and creepy, but somehow, it works well in this film. While this film doesn't really offer anything that special to the horror genre, I found the twist in the end to be rather interesting and fun. I have read other reviews stating that the twist was predictable and unoriginal, but I myself don't feel the same way and it's one of the reasons why I love this film so much. The thing about "Unhinged" is that, clearly, it is a less than perfect movie, but there's just something about it that makes a lot of people love it, without being able to explain why and I am one of those. I love this film and I regard it as one of my all time favorite slasher flicks, even though I also understand that it isn't all that great either.

Why do we go to horror films? To see a lot of gore and be on edge. What the hell was this writer thinking. We've got three honeys, one at the start, who we are granted with seeing her goodies while taking a shower, going to a rock concert during a rainstorm, which as consequence, they crash their car. They're taken in by a pleasant enough guy who works at this mansion that harbor a terrible secret. There's little suspense, but a lot of screen time wasted with uninteresting activity (chatting). The old woman who owns it, has a real nasty, spiteful nature, and worse, she HATES men, hence the secret. The younger woman, the sister, provides the twist, which I liked. You won't see the twist, so to speak, it's too well covered up. It doesn't look good for three girls, either, as one by one, they're being sliced up, with a sickle in some effectively sick gore. But Unhinged suffers, purely on the lack of suspense and uninteresting prattle, by our three mains who are okay in their roles, plus dialogue from others too, in a displaced horror that could of much better, if not for a lot of nothingness. The unveiling of the killer + murderous, reasons, provide a good backing of the character's motives. Unhinged is a horror movie you'll fee cheated by.

An odd combination of the weirder elements of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho, Unhinged tells the shocking tale of innocent young women who, out of nowhere, are forced into a world of familial dysfunction and horrible death. Three teenage girls are on their way to a music festival, but within five minutes of the film they get into a car accident and wake up in a strange mansion. They are greeted by the owner of the house and her adult daughter at dinner. Things get weird, however, when the mother lets loose some disturbing opinions about her daughter and the men in her life and all men in general. The girls are already creeped out enough, but then things get twisted when a prowler sneaks into the house and starts spying and preying on the girls. One-by-one, the girls are butchered mercilessly, and it all leads up to a grotesque and jaw-dropping finale that will have even the most seasoned horror fans startled.Released during the early 80s, and then shortly banned in the UK, unjustly, Unhinged is one hell of a wild slasher film. It's one of the most odd slasher films that was released in the 80s. I think that there's a lot to love about this film, despite it definitely being flawed. For starters, the setting. The film mostly takes place in a giant mansion and there is some remarkably strong atmosphere. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that you never really get to see most of the mansion. There's only a few locations that the film actually takes place in, and because of that you can really feel the eerie quality in a way that feels almost otherworldly. The combination of the mansion setting and the slasher film horror give the film a real surreal quality to it that makes it quite unique. The violence in the film is also kept to a minimum. It's how fast and how unexpected it usually happens that is more unsettling. When characters die in this film, they die quickly and in a rather blunt manner, well except for the very last death that I wouldn't dream in giving away. The performance of Janet Penner in the role of the daughter is also incredibly well mannered and remains as one of the most memorable aspects of the film. What really makes this film really work, however, is the ending. I'm not going to give away what happens, but the final ten minutes of this film are insane. They are like something out of a Hitchcock production. The ending of the film should go down in history as one of the greatest endings to a slasher film ever. I know that people will disagree with me, but I personally think that it deserves to rank right alongside the endings of Bob Clark's Black Christmas, Tod Browning's Freaks, and William Friedkin's The Exorcist as one of the strongest horror film finales of all time. I do not want to hype the ending to this film up any further though, because if I do one of two things will happen. One, you will be disappointed by it, or two, you will watch the film based just on the fact that it has a great ending. Make no mistake, it's a shocking ending, but throw away any hope of it being original. What I mean to say is that it's a very typical horror film twist ending, but done about as well as I have ever seen it get done. It's an offensive ending in a lot of ways, and it's incredibly misogynist, but it's effective and that's what matters.Unhinged, unfortunately, also suffers from a lot of the same problems that most slasher films suffer from. The film contains gratuitous and unnecessary nudity and drug use that takes away it's chances of being taken too seriously. I am not bothered by nudity and drug use in film, but here there really is no need for it at all. It's also a very slow paced film, and that may bother people. The performances of two of the three main female characters is also shockingly bad, almost to the point where you could swear that they are taking sleeping pills. Some of the line delivery is really distractingly awful. In all honesty, this is just another 80s slasher film and it does not try to do too many new things. It does, however, succeed in incorporating elements from more classic horror films, and for that I think that Unhinged is a horror film that is worth seeing.